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Forgot I had one of these. Sadly it doesn't work on an LCD monitor.

I wasn't able to find the software anywhere so I've attached the contents of the tape.

I've created a new page in the wiki

Curious. Still connects to the joystick port, but if it doesn't work with LCD, it must surely be a better design than the Trojan one (seemed to just detect light levels as analogue - horrible slow screen fills to determine X,Y). Photodiode across the fire button and really tight timing in the read routine?

It's possibly a better design than the Trojan pen in the sense that it detects changes in light level rather than absolute light level, which makes it less sensitive to ambient light. Other than that it was just as disappointing for freehand drawing, as it has a similar principle for detecting position. (The demo software is written in BASIC)

Realising that the Datapen does respond to a modulated light source such as an IR remote or pointing it out of the window and waving my hand over it, I thought there might be a trick way of flashing a hotspot on the LCD and detecting that. Unfortunately I couldn't get enough brightness/contrast on the LCD to trigger a response.

The housing is glued together so I'm not too keen on opening it up to find out what's going on.

sorchard wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:43 am The housing is glued together so I'm not too keen on opening it up to find out what's going on.

Yeah fair enough. With the Trojan one, you could just peer down the end and see an LDR towards the back (well this was a long time ago, I might have invented a whole false memory about it).